Tag Archives: the economy

Bull Market: Amid all the political noise in Washington, a milestone was passed Wednesday, one you may not have noticed. The bull market for stocks has now become the longest since World War II. Can it continue? That depends on federal policies.

We’re grateful to CNBC for actually counting the days: 3,453, starting on March 9, 2009. That’s a long time — 9.46 years to be exact.

Yes, it’s been a bull for the record books. Even so, we would note that the bull hasn’t been without tests to its longevity. And some might even deny it’s been a bull market all this time.

One common definition of a bear market is a decline of a major stock index by 20% or more from its previous all-time high, or 52-week high. Well, way back in 2011, the market was actually off more than 20% from its previous high, but on an intraday basis. So, technically, some think the bull ended. But it snapped back by the end of the day’s trading, so others say no.

But however you look at it, the fact is that the market has been on a long-term tear. The bull run began Continue reading →

The ability of businesses to grow rapidly is a one of the most defining and precious features of the American economy. Amazon went from a fledgling online bookstore to an “everything store” and the second-largest employer in the United States in just two decades. Uber emerged from nowhere less than ten years ago to become a dominant transportation option in cities around the world. And earlier this month, Apple became the first U.S. public corporation to reach a $1 trillion valuation — a far cry from its sorry state in 1996, when it looked doomed to fail.

It’s not just the information sector. The United States is home to 64 percent of the world’s billion-dollar privately held companies and a plurality of the world’s billion-dollar startups. Known in the industry as “unicorns,” they cover industries ranging from aerospace to biotechnology, and they are the reason America remains the engine of innovation for the entire world.

Unless Elizabeth Warren gets her way. In a bill unveiled this week, the Massachusetts senator has put forward a proposal that threatens to force America’s unicorns into a corral and domesticate the American economy indefinitely.

Plunging stock prices and slowing economic growth in China have raised anew the question of how much events abroad really matter to the U.S. Many of the answers are quite placid, drawing on the precedents of the 1997-98 Asian financial crisis, when there was similar concern about impacts at home, which never came. The U.S. grew at a 4.5% annual pace during those two years. For much of 2015, when U.S. growth remained steady despite volatile and weak growth in the rest of the world, the optimists said it was like 1997-98 all over again.

That may be, but the world has changed a lot in two decades. After 1998, the U.S. share of global GDP topped out at 32% but has since fallen to 24%, based on my analysis of raw data from the International Monetary Fund, while the emerging-world share bottomed out at 20% but has since doubled to nearly 40%. In that time, China has supplanted the U.S. as the largest contributor to global growth. Continue reading →

The S&P 500 has begun 2016 with its worst performance ever. This has prompted Wall Street apologists to come out in full force and try to explain why the chaos in global currencies and equities will not be a repeat of 2008. Nor do they want investors to believe this environment is commensurate with the dot-com bubble bursting. They claim the current turmoil in China is not even comparable to the 1997 Asian debt crisis.

Indeed, the unscrupulous individuals that dominate financial institutions and governments seldom predict a down-tick on Wall Street, so don’t expect them to warn of the impending global recession and market mayhem.

But a recession has occurred in the U.S. about every five years, on average, since the end of WWII; and it has been seven years since the last one — we are overdue.
Most importantly, the average market drop during the peak to trough of the last 6 recessions has been 37 percent. That would take the S&P 500 down to 1,300; if this next recession were to be just of the average variety. Continue reading →

The government is making you work longer and longer to cover its hefty costs. It took Americans 186 days of work to pay for their massive government.

by Peter Roff

Just in time for American Independence Day, the folks over at Americans for Tax Reform have released their annual Cost of Government Day findings – and the news is not good.

According to the annual study, which the group began to compile in the early ’90s, an American would on average have to work for 186 days into the calendar year before they earned enough to pay their share of government’s total cost at all levels – not just for the spending and borrowing, but for the cost the regulatory burden imposes as well.

For 2014, Cost of Government Day falls on July 6, the sixth consecutive year it comes in the seventh month of the year. Prior to President Barack Obama coming to office, the group said in a release, the latest date it had ever fallen was June 27. Continue reading →

Ask voters what their top priority is, and the most frequent answer is “the economy,” although that’s a catch-all term for a wide variety of concerns and sub-issues. That March Gallup poll found 59 percent personally worry about “the economy” a great deal; 58 percent said they worry about “federal spending and the deficit,” 57 percent “the availability and affordability of health care,” 49 percent “unemployment,” and 48 percent “the size and power of the federal government.”

Rarely will you find a political environment as golden for a Republican policy agenda as this one. Continue reading →

With the arrival and passing of yet another April 15th Tax Day, the federal government will consume 20.5 percent of America’s total income this year. It’s not as bad as in France or Greece, but somewhat worse than when we formed these United States. When we were Colonies under the British, the average tax burden on American colonists was 2 percent. That was considered unbearable, and the revolution was on.

There has been some slippage over the years. The 16th Amendment allowing the income tax opened the door to truly European, supersized government. Continue reading →

“The preservation of the sacred fire of liberty and the destiny of the republican model of government are justly considered, perhaps, as deeply, as finally, staked on the experiment entrusted to the hands of the American people.” George Washington, First Inaugural Address, April 30, 1789

December 31, 2012

As we approach 2013 we also review some of our must read articles from 2012. Please see below for several timely pieces by George Landrith on various topics, such as, taxes, the fiscal cliff, the economy, jobs, the election process and results, foreign policy, government largess, energy, and the Constitution. Continue reading →

Our Mission

Frontiers of Freedom, founded in 1995 by U.S. Senator Malcolm Wallop, is an educational foundation whose mission is to promote the principles of individual freedom, peace through strength, limited government, ...